missives issued from the lair

Six hundred guitarists gathered at the Darjeeling Tea and Tourism Festival have dedicated their version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ to the 23-year-old student who died after being gang raped in Delhi.

Five men have been charged with the unnamed woman’s murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. Vociferous protests on the streets of India have forced the government to commit to a review of their policies on sex crimes, although the fact that the victim in this case died as a result of being raped for “more than an hour by six men in a bus travelling on main roads in the Indian capital” suggests that rather more than policy reviews are required before this kind of thing stops happening.